Pablo Picasso, born Oct 25 in 1881 in Malaga, Spain. Died 1973.
Is one of the most influential painters of the 20th century. His talent was most likely inherited from his father, Don Jose Ruiz Blasco, who painted and taught drawing for a living. After receiving a teaching position at the Academy of Fine Arts in Barcelona, Don Jose was able to get the school officials to allow the young Picasso of fourteen years to take the entrance exams of the school. Picasso did so and passed with flying colors gaining a position in the senior section of the academy, and amazing the lecturers with his skill and talent. Legend has it that he completed in one day a subject for the exam for which a month was allocated. By the age of fifteen, Picasso had mastered portrait and genre painting.. His work from
1901 to 1904 is known as his Blue Period and involved emotional subject
matter painted in the Spanish tradition. In 1904 Picasso took a studio in
Bateau Lavoir and became the major force in an artistic circle which
included Max Jacob, Guillaume Apollinaire, Andre Salmon and Marie Laurencin.